Jane
by nightshade468
Summary: My answer to the question of whether or not ALL of the sixth month children died in Azazel's ghost town. Rated T for now, rating may go up.
1. Chapter One

Disclaimer: The CW owns the Winchesters, and anyone/any_thing_ else you might recognize from Supernatural. Jane and her dad are mine. Hetchinger's belongs to RRP © and BoD ©. Mars and Dr. Harrison belong to myself and Agaryulnaer (and themselves).

Jane

Chapter One

_One Year Earlier_

"_The sun is shining today in Astoria, a rare occurance in October. More rainclouds on the way, folks, so don't put away your umbrellas just yet. There's a high of fifty today, but temperatures will be dropping down to close to freezing tonight as another cold front moves in-"_

Jane reaches up to change the dial on her radio; her Audi dates back to the Stone Age, before the invention of electronic tuners. Growling in annoyance, she lets go of the knob so she can flip on her turn signal, almost missing the turn onto her street. A burst of static fills the car, but she doesn't pay it any mind. At least not until she hears the _shriek._

Terrified that one of the children playing in a nearby yard had somehow run into the street without her noticing, she slams on the brakes, her Psychology textbook falling to the floor of the car with a thump. But there's no one in front of her, and the radio, which had gone silent for a moment, returns to static.

Wide-eyed, Jane reaches out and turns the damned thing off, ignoring the shiver that's running down her spine. _Decrepit old car._

She makes it home without any more strange incidents, pulling into her driveway and sliding out of the car, staring up at her house. All of the curtains in the old bungalow are drawn; she sighs. Had her father even gotten out of bed yet, today?

_Mom wouldn't want this for him_, she thinks as she lets herself in. The same thought crosses her mind every day, as it has for the last ten years, since her mother had died. _She wouldn't want him to throw away his life like this._ But her father will roll out of bed around six, as usual, throw on his work clothes, and troop off to the docks, as he has every day for the last ten years, leaving her alone. Again.

"Dad, I'm home!" she calls, locking the door behind herself and dropping her book and notebook onto the hallway table with her keys. "Are you up? I'm going to make spaghetti!"

Half an hour later, though, she's put dinner on the table, gotten them both drinks, and eaten her own food, but her father hasn't emerged.

Annoyed, she stands, throwing her napkin onto the table. _He's coming down here._ She stomps up the stairs. "Dad, this is crazy. Come down and eat. You can't just starve yourself-"

There's a horrible stench coming from her father's bedroom. Like… rotten eggs.

Something scratches on the door, and then slams into it; Jane jumps. The hair on the back of her neck is standing straight up. "Dad?" she calls softly. She puts her hand on the doorknob-

_He's not here anymore…_ An old woman's crackly voice echoes through her mind.

Jumping again, she spins in a circle. "Who said that?"

The hallway is empty. But… she hadn't heard it… not really _heard _it.

Not out loud.

_Silly little girl…_

Slowly, she puts a hand to her forehead. _It's my imagination playing tricks on me. _"I'm not hearing voices."

_Come in and play, dearie…_

"I'm _not_!"

Shoving the heavy old door open, she runs into the room, seeing her father still lying in bed. "Dad, wake up, you have to wake up!"

Something breaks out in the hallway, and the old woman cackles in her head.

"Dad!" She yanks hard enough on his shoulder that he rolls onto his back, his dead eyes staring at the ceiling, face frozen in a permanent expression of terror. Shrieking, Jane leaps back, hitting the wall.

_She's a pretty one, she is._ Now it's a man's voice.

_She's mine! You can't have her!_ The old woman is back.

_Stop me, then._

Jane is clutching her temples now, crouched down and crying. "He's not dead, he's not dead, he's not dead, go away!"

_It's all right, dearie. He's with us, now. Come play with us. Come, over to the window…_ Shaking, Jane raises her head, only to see the drapes draw back from her father's window, the latch unlocking itself as she window opens out. "No," she whispers.

_Mummy's here. She wants to say hi… Come on, dearie…_

"NO!" Still clutching her temples, Jane runs out of the room, gasping for breath and sobbing. She almost falls down the stairs, yanking open the front door and throwing herself out into the front yard, where she falls to her knees and curls up in a ball.

The children playing in the yard next door stop and stare at her, while up on the second floor, the one open window closes and latches itself once more.


	2. Chapter Two

Disclaimer: Anything taken from Supernatural, I don't own.

Jane

Chapter Two

_One year later…_

"You're wallowing."

Jane stares at the white wall of the rec room, ignoring Mars.

"You're still wallowing."

She doesn't respond.

"Still wallowing."

He does this all the time. She's used to it.

"Still."

_I wonder what they're serving for dinner tonight? God, I would kill for some pizza._

"Aaaaand still."

It's been a year since she'd had pizza.

"Jane."

They'd tried to serve her spaghetti, once, her second week here. That hadn't gone over well.

"_Jane_."

Finally, she sighs, turning her attention from the dinner menu to her friend of the last three months, since he'd arrived at Hetchinger Psychiatric Hospital. Or the nuthouse, as Mars calls it.

"Yes?" she asks dryly, arching a brow as she eyes him. He's practically bouncing. Why is he bouncing?

"Nothing." He grins at her, and she shakes her head, amused, going back to her 'wallowing'.

"Did they make you paint today?" she asks after a minute, studying the swirls of paint on the wall. She'd had 'music class', where the crazies, or at least the ones who aren't homicidal, get to play with recorders and xylophones.

She's not homicidal. She just hears voices. She gets to play the recorder.

Mars' grin widens. "I finger-painted."

"I didn't know we got to do that."

"We don't." Now her friend's grin is decidedly evil.

Mars isn't homicidal, either. He'd tried to kill himself, cut his wrists and tried to drown himself in the bathtub. He's what the doctors call a 'high-risk' patient.

She's low-risk, mostly. She just hears things.

"You shouldn't screw with them; they'll keep you in here longer," she says quietly, turning to look at him. He just smiles, shaking his head at her as though disappointed that she hadn't remembered the obvious.

"They think I'm going to kill myself again. They won't let me go. Besides, where the hell would I go? My parents don't want a gay kid, and I'm not allowed to make my own decisions anymore." He shrugs. "Nothing I can do about it."

He pokes her arm. "Says she who's getting out in a couple of weeks."

Jane doesn't say anything.

She's not sure if she wants to get out.

After her father's death and what Dr. Harrison, her psychologist, has termed her 'psychotic episode', the state had committed Jane to this lovely psychiatric hospital, ruling that she's no longer mentally capable of making her own decisions legally. And until Dr. Harrison says that she is, she's stuck.

But she still hears things. Sees things.

She'd seen a man, just the other day, in ragged pajamas, shuffling down the middle of the hallway and muttering to himself. None of the orderlies had said a word. None of them could hear him. None of them could even _see_ him.

But she could.

She's seen him before. Him, and others. Many others.

Every time, it's like seeing a ghost.

But there's no such thing as ghosts. It's all in her head, figments of her imagination.

And until she can make them stop, she'll never get out of here. Just like Mars.


End file.
